Read Bless the Child for Free Online Page B

she would miss her till the day she died.
     
    She sighed and rolled down the window, so the cold air could clear her head. This isn’t about you Maggie, she reminded herself. This is about Cody living happily ever after.
     
    Just as long as she’s safe, she said aloud to the lush countryside, in an effort to buoy her own spirits. That’s all that matters .
     
    The land had changed from side-by-side great houses, to those on huge tracts of elegant real estate. Maggie checked the mileage and realized the immense iron gates straight ahead of her must be the Vannier estate. They appeared to be unlocked and unmanned.
     
    A long winding driveway curved languidly to the right, and disappeared into mature white pines and Acer maples that forested the estate, all the way to the Sound. Maggie steered the Volvo along an endless driveway until a house loomed up ahead of her—although “house” hardly seemed an adequate description for the vast mansion that materialized around the last wooded bend. Beyond a lawn so manicured it looked like the eighteenth green at St. Andrews, a French château of the late Gothic period stood. Elaborate turrets, mansard roof, and stone balustrade balconies gave the place the specter of a fortress from another century. Some besotted robber baron’s effort at immortality, she thought. Wouldn’t you know!
     
    Maggie parked at the center of the circular drive, shaken by the unexpected grandeur of the estate. The iron gates that preceded the eight-foot double doors at the entrance did nothing to calm her agitation.
     
    Wonderingly, she rang the echoing chimes, then stepped inside the marble-floored foyer, and handed her coat to a uniformed servant. “Madame will receive you in the East Drawing Room,” the woman said in a librarian hush, gesturing for Maggie to follow her through one elaborate room to another and another. The ominous quiet filled her with apprehension; there were no signs of life or laughter here. Where were the child-sounds in the mausoleum? Where, the small fingerprints on the walls? A clock chimed, startling her with its intrusion, and she focused more clearly on the room she’d been brought to.
     
    Her educated gaze caught an exquisite collection of New Guinean Cult hooks and a display of Kris knives; over the door arch, a culthouse lintel perched, and she remembered the Sepik River tribes who carved such images were cannibals. Very unusual collections for Greenwich. An assemblage of queer metal and leather artifacts in a glass case caught her attention; they looked vaguely familiar, but the only thing she could imagine them to be were thumbscrews, and that was absurd.
     
    “Good morning, Mother,” Jenna’s voice interrupted, sounding as if she’d taken elocution lessons from Katherine Hepburn. Maggie turned to see her daughter enter the room, graceful in a tailored Ungaro. The high-heeled shoes, stockings, jewelry, were all perfectly chosen, but oddly formal for so early an hour.
     
    “You look so . . . grown-up, Jenna,” Maggie said, confused by the image before her. “It’s hard for me to not think of you as the teenager I remember, and now . . . you’re so elegant.” She smiled and walked toward her daughter, tentatively; Jenna permitted an embrace without enthusiasm. Maggie took a deep breath and tried again.
     
    “All these years, I always believed you’d come home someday, sweetheart, but I suppose I never imagined you’d come home so full of surprises.”
     
    I have a wonderful life now, Mother,” Jenna responded, but Maggie heard no joy in the words.
     
    “This is quite a house, darling. You and Eric and Cody must have to leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your way back to your room at night.”
     
    Jenna relaxed a little. “There are fifty-some rooms here . . . I haven’t seen all of them yet. Eric’s grandfather built the place before the turn of the century, to duplicate one they own in the Loire Valley.”
     
    “And these collections